La première marche (No Contest)

Short

On his way to a rave in the Argentine Pampas, Martín takes refuge in a mysterious tavern after a strange accident. As night falls, paranoia and eerie visions blur reality, revealing lurking supernatural forces.

Short

Every day, Achraf is haunted by an imposing knight’s armor that follows him everywhere: to work, with friends, and even onstage as a drag king. Invisible to others, the armor grows harder to ignore, reflecting the pressures, fears, and inner battles that quietly shape his life.

Short

Determined to prove to his father that he is the city's most feared gangster, Alessandro sets out to rob a bar with his friend Joe. However, when they discover that it is a drag queen bar and that the star performer is Alessandro's father in drag, the night takes an unexpected turn.

Short

A court, a cell, awaiting a sentence. Two boys : Warda, a Lebanese refugee and Ange, a white delinquent. An attempted escape in the toilets sparks a manhunt, and the two fugitives, despite their different languages, try to imagine their fate together.

Short

Trans women boxers share their stories of gender euphoria, struggles, and resilience, revealing the powerful bonds they build through their shared practice of the sport.

Short

Najib, a reserved 16-year-old, spends his summer alone, absorbed in video games. When his elderly Algerian neighbor disappears, he secretly takes her apartment keys and uncovers traces of a vanished world. Through this quiet exploration, he begins to open himself to others and to islands on the verge of disappearing.

Short

In a rigid manor where everyone conforms, a woman receives an orange, a fruit she has never seen before. This discovery transports her into a forested world of sensual fluidity where she must choose between returning to her old life or embracing a new, transformative way of being.

Short

Trans women boxers share their stories of gender euphoria, struggles, and resilience, revealing the powerful bonds they build through their shared practice of the sport.

Feature

A stroke upends 76-year-old Vicente’s recently charmed life in the Canary Islands, forcing him to trade his queer eden for a restrictive care home in San Sebastián—and to consider how essential his sexuality is to his identity. Among the nude forms dotting the Maspalomas dunes is Vicente (Jose Ramón Soroiz), a young man giving him pleasure. After 50 closeted years, this sensual existence is to be his reward. But three months later, he finds himself in a long-term care facility with neither income nor his beloved dog, minded by his estranged daughter (Nagore Aranburu). Paired with a motormouthed roommate (Kandido Uranga) with far right sympathies. Anonymously messaging his carer Iñaki (Kepa Errasti) but rejecting him in person. Camera sweeps and choral flourishes encapsulating a world that moves while he sits still. Then, a new manager brings changes just as he’s assimilated to the pale ghost of his days, dangling the hope of a “real home.” Taking us from 2018 Pride to the 2020 pandemic, directors Aitor Arregi and José Mari Goenaga honour those affected by health crises and the inexorable fact of time’s passage, which alters us in unpredictable ways.

Feature

A tight-knit group of revolutionary gay filmmakers in late-1950s former Yugoslavia are shackled by the state to Emir, a communist bureaucrat conditioned to see sabotage everywhere. When the group endeavours to use the Tito regime’s ideological weapons against them, an upended system or the horrors of Barren Island await. Desire—for all of us—can be a heady cocktail. In a society that turns desire inside out, with trust shaken and lover pitted against lover, it becomes a minefield. Dancing cheek to cheek and screwing with abandon turned into revolutionary acts, art a tool for undermining authority. All tactics taken up by professional and romantic partners Lovro (Dado Cosic) and Nenad (Djordje Galic) and their fellow filmmakers (Slaven Doslo, Elmir Krivalic). The four friends determined to savour glimpses of the beautiful lives possible if defense mechanisms could safely fall—a boogie-woogie record; a secluded, seaside house in Istria—as they risk their lives for the cause of freedom. In Croatia’s official submission for the 2025 Academy Awards, the sex is explicit, the stakes and brutality intense, the cinematography stunning. A gutting and rarefied concoction immortalized by writer-director Ivona Juka’s daring cinematic achievement.

Short

In the near future, Dove, a gender fluid person, discovers the powers and perils of their Inkwo (Indigenous medicine) while defending the living against a horde of ravenous monsters, testing their courage, resilience, and connection to the Earth.

Feature

CROATIAN • ENGLISH ST | Marko, slight but mighty, seems always in control, always a champion—but what happens when he slips his banks? As “unstable air” portends torrential rains for a small Croatian village, the return of Marko’s former neighbour is the rush that might pull him under. Marko (Lav Novosel in a natural, understated performance) has a full life: a brother with Down syndrome (Leon Grgić) who he treats with a soft attentiveness; learning discipline from his father (Filip Šovagović) in the lead up to an arm-wrestling competition; chanting about female anatomy with his buds before pestering his girlfriend Petra (Franka Mikolaci) for sex. But there’s another side to his even-keeled bravado. For, as he tells his brother in the guise of a story, “the boy and the bunny” were once “inseparable,” with a secret hiding place of their own. And now that “bunny” is back. Home from cosmopolitan Berlin for his father’s funeral, Slaven (Andrija Žunac) catches Marko off guard. Despite training constantly as if to outrun his feelings, Marko returns again and again to the river, again and again to Slaven. An imported joint is shared, affections are renewed, and temperatures—and waters—rise.

Feature

With the verve of a Guy Ritchie caper and the popping-hearts swoon of Heartstopper, writer-director-actor Lloyd Eyre-Morgan brings us a tale of troubled men and a soured affair. When two frequent flyers from the north of England cut ties, one sifts through the past to master his heartbroken present. According to “fit AF” Jake (David Tag), his sexuality is 70/30—the 30% of himself set aside for men. With one weekend a month in Amsterdam saved for sweet, searching Benji (Lloyd Eyre-Morgan), who he meets after a cancelled flight. The two seeming opposites wade through emotional and societal baggage to find the sweet spot: a short-term rental in Amsterdam where they can meet away from homegrown obligations. But the closer Benji gets to Jake’s gooey center, the more Jake approaches romance with the bumper rails up, flip-flopping between encouraging and squashing Benji’s vulnerability—and his own. In addition to its sex-soaked escapades and visual flair, Departures is written with care and complexity, peeling off layer after layer of what builds bonds, only to have them break. Self-funded by a collective of working-class LGBTQ+ filmmakers, this Manchester-made feature is confident, can’t-miss filmmaking.

Feature

Passionate, provocative, and powerful—it’s easy to see why Bearcave was awarded the Europa Cinema Label at the 2025 Venice Film Festival. Set in a fictional remote village in the Balkan Mountains of Greece, a love story between two lifelong friends unfolds—but will their relationship survive the call of womanhood? Argyro is a farm girl—hard-working, unpretentious, and wholesome while Anneta is … in a bit of trouble. Whisked away by her law enforcement beau (and carrying his child) Anneta’s move to the city threatens to sever her friendship with Argyro for good, but their understated glances from across the crowd at a party one night tells a different story. The whisper of sweet nothings and foggy windows in Argyro’s pickup truck soon fade to memory, leaving behind a cloud of confusion and heartbreak, that is—until Anneta’s side of the story unfolds. Set against a backdrop of sweeping landscapes, a mystical cave, and nettle bushes, Bearcave is a film that’s steeped in tradition, then abruptly subverted, and not only by a sapphic love story, but a hybrid soundscape of folkloric and contemporary music, as well as ethereal sequences of cinematographic magic.

Feature

Based on Fleur Pierets’ memoir of the same name, Julian tells the heart-wrenching love story between the author Fleur and Julian Demoor and Project 22—their international LGBTQ+ marriage campaign of 2017 that was brought to an abrupt halt by tragic circumstances. In 2017, it was legal for same-sex couples to get married in twenty-two countries worldwide, hence the birth of the performance art piece: Project 22. Fleur Pierets, a Belgian journalist and LGBTQ+ activist, came up with the idea to travel around the world and marry Julian—her partner in life as well as business (as co-founders of Et Alors? Magazine)—and not only once, but in every country where it was possible. The goal? To raise awareness on how few places same-sex couples could legally marry. Director Cato Kusters provides a fictionalized account spanning the campaign, from the years 2017–2019, with home-movie-esque film segments that provide an immersive peek into this courageous couple’s experience, both behind the scenes, on the road, and after the fact—moments of joy and silliness, as well as the intimacy, doubt, uncertainty of fighting for one’s rights while also fighting for one’s life.

Documentary

In Muslim-majority Malaysia, a queer punk band led by a transman are outliers of the system —carving out spaces to exist through their music while challenging conservative traditions and religious extremism. Brash, defiant and wickedly funny, punk rockers Shh…Diam! are an underground sensation in Kuala Lumpur. An all-queer band led by charismatic trans man Farris Saad, they’ve won devoted fans with playful anthems like “I Woke Up Gay” and “Lonely Lesbian.” Even their name (“Shut up!” in Malay) is a joke, poking fun at those who’d rather queer folks just kept quiet. Malaysia’s harsh laws are no laughing matter, however, and they put Farris and his bandmates at real risk of state persecution. Filming over six years, director Yihwen Chen follows them to practices, gigs and protests, capturing their irreverent advocacy amid a spate of anti-LGBTQ+ raids and arrests. She also documents major developments in their personal lives and relationships, including Farris’s preparations for his surgical transition. Both an iconic portrait of fearless activism and an intimate chronicle of chosen family, Queer as Punk is an instant entry in the queer cult canon.